Smile
by redrupee
Summary: Yuffie Kisaragi is sharing a room at an inn with Vincent Valentine, and neither of the two can sleep. Luckily for her and unluckily for Vincent , she has some ideas on how to pass the time, complete with an ulterior motive. Friendship fic!


AN: Wow, another fic already, huh? Someone needs to castrate my brain. Anyway, this is for JulesKD, who wanted me to write Vincent. THERE I DID IT. As a side note, I **do not** ship Yuffie and Vincent, but I think they're an interesting character combo, if only because they're polar opposites. Cait Sith is here because I think he's cute. ps have I ever mentioned how much I HATE HATE HATE this uploading system?

--

"You can't sleep either, huh?" Yuffie watched Vincent through her wide and youthful eyes, eyes that smiled. It was late, and although the rest of their group had long since drifted off, two of the three that shared the room were wide awake. She was draped horizontally over her bed, on her back, with her hands folded neatly against her stomach. Being upside-down, she had a rather skewed view of things, but that was a small price to pay in order to hang her head off the side of the bed - it was working out the kink she'd had in her neck ever since the young man she'd so tactfully called a spiky-headed jerk managed to defeat her in battle.

Vincent sighed and crossed his arms, leaning against the wall behind him. He sat atop his pillows, cross-legged and lingering ominously in the dim light of the table lamp. "You should know," he began slowly, tapping a metal claw against the elbow of his opposite arm, "that I have slept for quite a while. I have gotten more than enough sleep…"  
"Sleep, schmeep!" Yuffie interrupted, sitting bolt upright on the bed and consequently falling right off of her perch from a head rush. The unexpected turn of events hardly interrupted whatever she had planned, however, for she stood right up again and brushed herself off. "I don't need sleep, either! I'm a thief! I'm noctuous!"  
"Nocturnal," Vincent corrected. "Keep your voice down, please. And I hate to break it to you, Ms. Kisaragi, but human beings are not naturally nocturnal. Besides, growing women should get the proper amount of rest."  
Yuffie stamped her feet and violently put her hands on her hips. "Rest, schmest, Vincent!" She sounded rather offended. "We're wasting time. I can't sit here and sleep when there's Ma…" She paused and grinned sheepishly, then continued. "When there's stuff to be done!"  
Vincent decided not to dignify her childish reasoning with a response. He was starting to grow tired of her dismissive nature, after all. "Turn out the light," he demanded, closing his eyes against the glow. "Cait Sith is trying to sleep."  
Yuffie's eyes darted over to the cat robot and the stuffed mog in the corner. "Who cares?" She stormed, glaring at it disdainfully. "It doesn't sleep. It's a robot. It probably just turns itself off or something."

"You understand so little," the cloaked man retorted icily. The bothersome ninja made no reply, instead fixing him with a blank stare that he could feel even through the layers of dismal clothing that he wore. Unnerving as her youthful and untainted gaze happened to be, Vincent was more than happy to settle for his treasured silence. The valued quiet was destroyed in a matter of moments, however, when he opened his eyes to realize that his young comrade was perched on his bed and staring him right in the face.  
"If you're trying to startle me, it's not going to work," the ex-Turk stated bitterly. Yuffie grinned back at him in response.  
"I wasn't gonna scare you," she said, sitting back on her knees so that she wasn't quite as intrusive. "I just wanted you to open your eyes back up."  
"Keep your voice down," he scolded yet again. "And it seems that you got what you wanted." He then belatedly realized that he had been looking directly into those smiling eyes and quickly glanced away, cringing with the awkwardness of the situation, awkwardness that was entirely one-sided.

Silence.

"Vincent, have you danced before?" Yuffie asked, canting her head off to the side. Vincent absolutely gawked at her, blindsided by the question.  
"… Years and years ago," he responded distantly once he'd regained his composure. "Surely long before you were brought into this world…"  
Yuffie grinned again and sprang off of his bed. She didn't seem to notice that she'd hit her head on the ceiling fan in the process. "Well, that's what we should do right now!" She chimed, holding a hand out expectantly. "You're always so stuffy and boring - no offense - and I think you should try to do something fun for once because you're really mopey - no offense - and you always bring the mood down. I've never seen you smile or nothin'."

Vincent glared at her.

"… No offense," she added as an afterthought.

Vincent wasn't sure what made him reach out to her. The warmth of her skin was startling against the cold, death-caressed touch of his own, and he retracted his hand as if he had realized she was on fire.  
"I can't," he said, surprised that he actually felt genuinely ashamed. "I'm sorry. It's been so long since I've been near anyone… I can't. Not with you, nor anyone else." He couldn't bear to look at her, to see her childish disappointment. That's what she was - a child. He was denying a child caught up in the messy death of a planet the right to feel happy.  
"It's okay," Yuffie said with a nonchalant shrug. Vincent looked up at her, startled. "I mean, I guess it'd be kind of weird, anyway. You're so old."  
Vincent began to pout mildly in spite of himself. "Old…?"  
"No offense," she tacked on. "I just kinda wanted to see you smile - that's all."  
He smirked coldly, just to give her some sort of response before lapsing into the silence he had planned - and he would've gone through with his plot had she not suddenly grasped his wrist and pulled him roughly to his feet with surprising strength.

"What are you…" The quiet man began to object, but the nimble ninja had already spun him, throwing his center of balance of completely.  
"If you can swoosh a cape, you can dance!" Yuffie said with a bright laugh as she began to hum some terrible, unrecognizably off-key tune. Vincent's heavy shoes clunked against the floor; he lacked the speed and grace the child that was leading him possessed, and he thusly gave up and allowed her to do as she pleased. She darted around the room with her friend in tow, spinning him whenever she desired, which was, to her partner's dismay, quite often. The experience was short-lived, for Vincent was heavier than he looked, especially when he made himself dead weight, and Yuffie soon had to stop and catch her breath.  
"Whew," she said, bending to put her hands on her knees. "That was a work-out." She grinned up at Vincent…  
… Who was, bless his heart, having quite a bit of trouble regaining his bearings. Spinning isn't the best thing to do after a very long sleep - he stumbled, tripped, and went forehead-first into the wall beside Cait Sith, dizzily pressing his hands on either side of his head to maintain his balance. The mechanical ears of the android swiveled automatically.

"Yo!" The voice in the next room whispered gruffly. "Shu'up ya damn fools! We's tryin'a sleep in here!"

Yuffie giggled shrilly, then quickly smothered the noise with her palm. "I guess you can't dance," she admitted, whispering for the first time that night, "even if you can swoosh a cape. Tough luck, Vincent."  
The pale and lonely man peeled his face off of the wall, rubbing the red fabric over the area of impact with his thumb and forefinger. "I tried to warn you, Ms. Kisaragi," he said in that same polite tone, sounding rather embarrassed.

Maybe it was a trick of that dim light, but Yuffie could have sworn on all the Materia in the world that through the cloth over his mouth and the skin pale as death, through the experiments and the nightmares and the hatred and regret, Vincent Valentine was giving her a smile.


End file.
